One Day for Adam
by VanishedElf
Summary: Adam drives back over summer break to visit Ronan at the Barns after his first year away at college. No matter how many times he returns, he never knows what to expect. A short glimpse into the post-highschool Ronan/Adam relationship. Pynch, Ronan/Adam, RonanxAdam, RonanLynchxAdamParrish, Ronanlynch/AdamParrish


Adam's car pulled off the highway, raising a dust-cloud the size of a miniature cyclone above the gravel road. He wondered if Ronan could see it from where he was waiting, like a warning, an augury of what was about to happen. If he could, and intuited its meaning accordingly, he knew a lot more than Adam did.

Adam could never tell what was going to happen when he drove out to the Barns. It had always been that way. Take an afternoon, add Adam, then add Ronan, and something unexpected and strange was bound to occur. Adam wondered if this was part of what kept them coming back to one another across such expanses of time and space. The unexpected. The gamble. Deep down, both of them had always been thrill junkies. Adam just admitted it less readily than Ronan.

There were a lot of things Adam had a hard time admitting, when he came to think about it.

It was a dry summer in Henrietta and the sun was murderous. It glistened atop the hood of Adam's car like a mirage, giving him the impression that if he were to step outside without a shade he would be vaporized instantaneously like a drop of water in a pan. The grass was dun and crisped, the trees faded. The only moisture for miles was probably on Adam. The back of his shirt had long since adhered itself to the cracked leather car seat. Riles of sweat trickled down his forehead onto his face. He wondered what Ronan was doing today, chuckling at himself as he pulled up to the familiar homestead. It seemed odd to postulate upon such things when the answer to his question was mere seconds away.

 _Time to get out of my head,_ he thought to himself. _Time to relax._

As if it were so easy.

Without Cabeswater to escape to, he'd been forced to adopt other devices for coping with his life—a life made complicated, profuse, and demanding, mainly on his own accord. It was simply in his nature to take the difficult road. Perhaps he was afraid of letting himself go soft, or rather, getting accustomed to doing so. It had never been a luxury he'd been afforded in the past, and he hesitated to applying such a philosophy to the future.

Plan for hardship. Expect the worst.

These were the principles his parents had passed down to him from young, and they were difficult philosophies to shake.

Before he could think too deeply on it, the front door clattered open and Ronan Lynch stalked out of his house with about as much ceremony as a gas station attendant trudging out to fill up somebody's tank. Still... despite the ripped black t-shirt, the stained jeans, and the hunched shoulders, something in Ronan's eyes made Adam sit up a little straighter in his seat. He unbuckled himself and allowed the belt to retract slowly, watching Ronan approach like a storm across the mountains.

Ronan ripped open the driver's seat door and slammed his forearm against the doorframe, looming over Adam in all his indecipherable glory. Adam stared up from where he was sitting, stubborn yet slightly more reticent than his tattooed counterpart. He'd never been good with emotions. Really, he'd never been good with people in general. He lacked Gansey's easy charm, Blue's wit. All he had was his persistence. And intelligence. An intelligence few people took the time to scrutinize.

Right now, he felt that if Ronan scrutinized him any harder, he'd see directly into Adam's soul.

"Hey," Adam managed to mutter, reaching awkwardly for his bag. When Ronan didn't reply, Adam shuffled his legs out of the car until the two boys were facing one another. A slight breeze cooled his sweat-soaked skin. "You might want to move," he said, doing his best to sound pragmatic.

Without warning, Ronan's face split into a terrifying grin. It was a look Adam was familiar with but he hadn't seen for a while. It smacked of skipped classes, angry professors, burning heaps of trash, and teenage indolence at large. Funny enough, neither of them attended high school anymore, but the sentiment carried forth. Adam quirked his mouth up to the side and allowed himself to acknowledge the slight skip in his heart. He'd been away at college for two semesters, but all of this was still so new.

"Move, asshole," he said, bumping his bag against Ronan's shins.

Ronan said nothing.

Both of their grins deepened.

Without hesitation, Adam tossed his bag to the side and made to shove Ronan out of the way. Ronan grabbed him by the shoulders and yanked him out of the car, hurtling them around into an impressive shrub. Adam may have been a mechanic, but he'd been away at college for two semesters, leafing through books and surfing the internet, while Ronan had been growing, if possible, more wild than before. Adam knew Ronan probably could've overpowered him, but he also knew that wasn't the point.

 _The struggle,_ Adam thought to himself. _He's always loved the struggle._

Adam grabbed Ronan by the scruff of his shirt and shoved him against the car, leaning over to mutter a taunt in his ear, but before the words had left his mouth Ronan flipped him around, pressing his damp body against the scorching metal. Adam gritted his teeth in grim acceptance, absorbing the sensation the same way he received everything else. With determination. And perhaps a little more pleasure than was warranted.

"Missed me, Lynch?" he challenged, pressing his body flush against Ronan's as he struggled to break free.

"Fuck," Ronan breathed at last, clearly derailed by the feeling of Adam against him. His eyelashes fluttered uncontrollably over a pair of crystalline blue eyes.

Their legs were tangled like reams of rope. Adam could feel Ronan's pulse in his arm. It rushed in his veins like a torrent, beating against Adam's fingers like an interminable drum. He hoped it never stopped. Adam spoke into Ronan's neck, breathing his words directly against the other boy's skin.

"I missed you too."

The confession was almost too quiet to discern, but Ronan clearly heard it. Adam could tell by the way the other boy's countenance relaxed into an oddly serene expression—the same expression he tended to adopt when he emerged from the trees after a long day in the forest. Perhaps there was something more to their bizarre amity than a mere thrill. It was as though their lives were thrashing, writhing, heaving affairs, beset with fleeting moments of transcendental enlightenment. This was one of those moments. Adam might've been honoured if he weren't so distracted by the rapid rise and fall of Ronan's chest, the heavy swallow in his throat.

"Damn you, Parrish," Ronan muttered.

And then there was nothing more to discuss. Everything Ronan said he said emphatically, but not as much as the things he _did._ He was outlandishly loyal, fiendishly impolite, and when he loved, he loved with more selfhood than Adam was capable of comprehending.

"One day," Adam gasped, thankful to have removed his own shirt at last. Ronan's sheets were much softer than his leather car seats.

"Adam—"

"One day," Adam repeated, with even less breath than before.

Ronan's response was made with his eyes. They lanced into Adam like sunlight after sitting in a dark room. Ronan lanced into Adam, and Adam greeted him with as much ramshackle cordiality as he could muster.

 _One day I'll understand you._

The sun outside was unrelenting. Somewhere a raven cawed.


End file.
